Excerpt From The 3rd Chapter Of My Newly Released Christian Book
"Apprehended & Apprehending"
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hen you really think about it, it appears that
Paul’s desire in Philippians 3:10 to know God in the fellowship of His
sufferings was a strange one. Since his life was already plagued with
sufferings, why would he want more of it? This is the reality of being truly
Christian. Paul’s desire is the fruit of his faith in Christ, His love for Him
and part of the true meaning of working out your Salvation with fear and
trembling. Before we can get to a real desire of the fellowship of His
sufferings, we have to learn obedience to the point where suffering with Him
and for Him becomes natural to us—as natural as it was for Christ to obey His
Father! Jesus left Heaven and His position as His Son and made Himself a nobody
for our sake and the glory of His Father. As His ministry advanced Christ said
in Matthew 26:38
“…My soul is exceedingly sorrowful…”
While I have no doubt no one can ever experience the depth of His sorrow—not
even Paul—mimicking Christ and Paul also means getting through this very path
of suffering. Christ will decide the intensity of the sorrow in our soul. Scriptures made it clear to us that Christianity is
about persecutions and afflictions. Christ could not say it clearer when He
said in Mark 8:34,
“If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and
take up his cross and follow me.”
Paul also said in 2
Corinthians 1:5,
“…we
share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ…"
It is important to understand first of all that it
is not our idea of what the cross might be
but Christ’s idea. The cross in this verse is simply Christ’s Cross we
have inherited through our identification with Him. As we move forward with
Him, the deeper we go, the more sufferings within our sufferings is to be
expected if we wish to be prepared for His purpose in our lives. Paul is not
just talking about sufferings in this realm. There is a kind of suffering that
we go through within our suffering that is so heavy, we literally have a hard
time walking and talking in this realm. We go on with a heavy sorrow in the soul and it is not up to
us to say when it is enough or when we get out of it.
In the meantime God is having His way with our
soul. We know beyond the shadow of a doubt that death is being worked in us—we are dying to self, inwardly, as we learn to take
up the cross of Christ, not our man-made cross. This kind of
sufferings can never be explained, only except experienced. There is no earthly pain to match it. The first
time I experienced this kind of pain was when I went through the biggest crisis
in my life. My life was falling apart completely, and I was losing everything.
Only then did God feel it was time to bring on that pain. Even though I was new
to this kind of spiritual training and sanctification process, I knew the
sorrow in my soul was spiritual. After He confirmed that I was regenerated, He
explained what the pain was about a few days later. This exceedingly heavy
sorrow in my soul was Him dealing with my soul while using the Word as a
double-edged sword. To that revelation I replied, “Wow! You made provisions for
everything in the Bible!” It was that day He illuminated my mind to understand
what He meant when He said, “His word will not return void.” I started
understanding how precious each word in the Bible is to our soul and to our
Salvation, here and now.
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